AI and the Vulnerable Elder: Thank You — and the Resources to Take Home

Recently we sat in a room full of people who spend their days looking out for older adults — and we showed them something unsettling. A video of a respected local prosecutor, speaking in his own voice, saying things he never said. Then we cloned a voice live, in front of everyone, in about a minute.

None of it was real. That was the point.

We came together for “AI and the Vulnerable Elder,” a session about how quickly AI has changed the way scammers target seniors, and what the people who serve them can do about it. Thank you to everyone who showed up, leaned in, and asked the hard questions. It was one of the most engaged rooms we’ve been part of.

Why this matters now

The numbers are hard to ignore. In 2025, Americans 60 and older reported more than $7.7 billion in losses to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center — a 37% jump in a single year. And the FBI has been clear that scammers are increasingly using AI to generate the calls, the messages, and even the voices behind these schemes.

That is what makes this moment different. The “grandparent call” used to be a stranger doing an impression. Now it can sound like your grandchild’s actual voice, cloned from a few seconds of audio anyone can pull off social media. The tools are cheap, fast, and getting better every week.

What we covered

Working alongside Serving Seniors and the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office, we tried to make the threat real instead of theoretical:

• An AI-generated video built entirely from publicly available footage, to show how convincing a fake can be.
• A live voice-cloning demonstration, so the room could see exactly how little it takes.
• A plain-language conversation about the handful of habits that actually stop these scams: verifying through a second channel, agreeing on a family code word, and slowing down when a message creates urgency.

The takeaway was not fear. It was that a few simple, shared rules protect people far better than trying to spot a perfect fake.

The resources are yours to keep

Everything we shared is online and free: guides, a staff AI use policy template, a family verification protocol, conversation scripts, and a few interactive tools. We add to it regularly, so it is worth checking back.

Get the toolkit: centrexit.com/elder-ai

If your organization sends a follow-up to attendees, please pass the link along — it is built to be shared with staff, families, and the older adults in their care.

Thank you

To Serving Seniors, to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office and Deputy District Attorney Scott Pirrello, and to every caregiver, case manager, and family member in the room — thank you for the trust you put in this conversation. Protecting older adults is work that only happens through partnership, and we are grateful to do it alongside you. We hope this is the first of many.

Protecting the people you serve starts with protecting your own systems. Take our free 2-minute cybersecurity assessment to see where you stand.

Sources

• FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), Elder Fraud statistics, 2025 — https://www.ic3.gov/
• “Increasing elder fraud a ‘huge concern,’ FBI and NYC officials say,” CBS News New York, March 2026 — https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/elder-fraud-concern-fbi-nyc/